iCR: Investigating Community Resilience

In this discussion, Jim MacInnes CEO of Crystal Mountain Resort, sits down with Dave to discuss energy policy and decisions. Jim outlines all that has been done at Crystal to improve energy conservation and efficiency to become one of the business leaders in the field. Jim also openly discusses the need for business to get behind energy improvements. Michigan is energy poor but can make great advances in both efficiency and conservation. Jim and Dave also discuss the concept of a national revenue neutral carbon tax as proposed by the Citizen's Climate Lobby.

A Carbon Tax Gaining Steam
This edition of iCR features two volunteers from the local chapter of the Citizens Climate Lobby. Elizabeth Dell and Maura Brennan. The CCL is a national effort with chapters growing in number across Michigan, aimed at creating the political atmosphere and support for a revenue neutral carbon tax. Taxing carbon use is an effective method of reducing carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels. Our reliance on fossil fuel is diminished by a tax and the tax revenues are redistributed equally as rebates to individuals, much like an income tax refund. If carbon emissions are not brought under control our planet will continue to warm up and the climate will be forced to change dramatically.

Connecting To Nature Matters
This discussion is with Jim Crowfoot, Professor Emeritus at the University of Michigan. Professor Crowfoot has developed a credit course open to most incoming UM students regardless of major. In his class Jim Crowfoot seeks to guide students towards development of their own spiritual connection to the natural world around them. So many incoming students, he finds, suffer from a very real 'nature deficit'. Without a spiritual connection to nature the meaning of "eco-social communities", so important to Resilience thinking, is lost. Human communities are still fundamentally rooted in the natural world and the eco-system services it provides.

Andy Knott, Executive Director of the Watershed Center, joins Dave for an update on Watershed activities which include major storm water mitigation projects around the Bay and long term work managing sediment behind three dams scheduled for removal from the Boardman River. Brown Bridge Pond will see dam removal and restoration of the river bed over the next year. Dave and Andy also discuss a presentation at the recent Fresh Water Summit in Traverse City. We share a portion of Dr. Gary Fahnensteil's talk on developments in the water-column food web in Lake Michigan where the Quagga mussel is changing everything at an historic rate. Fahnensteil works at the Great Lakes Research Lab in Ann Arbor and his findings are sobering.

ABOUT iCR

Here is some of NREC’s best work, in the form of video interviews, Bioneers keynotes, and videos of a few other notable luminaries who spoke in our region between 2012 and 2014. We are leaving this material available as part of Bob Russell’s legacy and because this material still has great relevance.

The Neahtawanta Center launched a project called Investigating Resilience in 2012.

Ecosystem resilience is the capacity of an ecosystem to tolerate disturbance without collapsing into a qualitatively different state that is controlled by a different set of processes. A resilient ecosystem can withstand shocks and rebuild itself when necessary. Resilience in social systems has the added capacity of humans to anticipate and plan for the future. Humans are part of the natural world. We depend on ecological systems for our survival and we continuously impact the ecosystems in which we live from the local to global scale. Resilience is a property of these linked social-ecological systems (SES). "Resilience" as applied to ecosystems, or to integrated systems of people and the natural environment, has three defining characteristics:

The amount of change the system can undergo and still retain the same controls on function and structure

The degree to which the system is capable of self-organization

The ability to build and increase the capacity for learning and adaptation

As we focus in on some specific areas within our social community, such as food systems, health care, energy and economics, we will investigate their level of resilience based on indicators such as: vibrancy, inclusiveness, diversity, optimism, cooperation, self reliance. Ecological systems can be assessed by using some of the same indicators, along with fragmentation, degradation, ability for regeneration, resistance to disease, and balance.